Recipe

"It" is pulled pork. Ordinarily you'd need a smoker to do this right and that's not a winter kind of thing to do in general, certainly not in the snow-blanketed Northeast (or Mid-Atlantic). This recipe lets you cook pulled pork indoors using your oven. A crock pot will make pulled pork but it won't have any Maillard reaction or crispy bits, which are pretty major disappointments. This recipe looks promising....

I suspect you could adapt it to chicken or turkey reasonably well, though you'd need to alter times, etc. Any thoughts on this?

My brother came over for lunch today and brought by the makings of a wonderful latke feast.

We didn't have latkes. By the time we got through with the rest of the food, we were far too full. He kindly left me with potatoes, oil, sour cream, applesauce, and everything else I needed on the condition that I blog about which type of potato was better for latkes: russet or Yukon Gold. He left me with plenty of both.

So, latkes were made for dinner... along with kosher hot dogs and homemade coleslaw (leftover from lunch) wrapped in injera. It was some sort of strange Jewish-Ethiopian Fusion dinner... which, I suppose, isn't nearly as strange as it could be... It was also pretty tasty.

I made up two batches of latkes, identical but for the type of potato used. The basic recipe I used follows:

2 lbs potatoes, grated
1 med onion, quartered and sliced
1 shallot, halved and sliced
4 eggs
3 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon corn meal
2 teaspoons salt
a pinch of baking powder
Whatever spices you want. I encourage you to go crazy and use star anise or something, but you'll probably just use black pepper. Could I convince you to give allspice a try, maybe? It will work well with the applesauce.

I just mixed everything together and fried the latkes up. You want to use a ton of oil for latkes. You should be able to get a good idea of how much I used from the picture above.

The results were good, and a little surprising to me. Visually, the two potatoes produced fairly similar latkes:

The Yukon Gold had a bit more of a yellow color to them, but other than that I couldn't really tell them apart by sight. I am generally a fan of Yukon Gold potatoes, but I was worried that they wouldn't fry up as nicely as the Russets (of which I am less of a fan). The consistency of the two latkes, though, was remarkably similar. They each had a crispy browned outside and a creamy inside that tasted strongly of potato.

The Russet potato had nostalgia going for it. These were the latkes that I grew up eating. Angela thought they paired better with the applesauce than the Yukon Gold did, and I think I have to agree with her. Their taste plays off of the sweetness well. The Yukon Gold made a good, solid latke that I can't find any fault with... but holiday foods in general are tremendously caught up in nostalgia, and I found myself unable to judge what latke was best on its own merits. I kept coming back to the fact that the Russet tasted more like a latke to me.

As much as it pains me, I have to give victory to the Russet.

What kind of potato do you use for latkes?

Alternate answers such as, "I don't use potatoes at all, I make beet+turnip latkes," are more than acceptable.

Growing up, one of my favorite holiday dishes was my great-grandmother's noodle kugel. Kugel is one of those things that has a wide variety of meanings - it roughly translates as pudding or casserole. In my family's case, noodle kugel was a sweet baked dish composed of egg noodles loaded with cream cheese, sour cream, eggs, and pineapples. It is one of the family recipes that I got from my grandfather, though I know that the version that he gave me was changed a bit. Like me, he was a tinkerer with food.

That was years ago... and, to be fair, one of the first things I did with the recipe he gave me was make notes about how to change it. I'm like that.

Not too long ago, I started thinking about kugel after talking to my brother about traditional Jewish foods. I came back to the family recipe. At the time, the idea of something quite that sweet was unappealing. I decided that it needed to be toned down... and maybe have some contrast added to it.

The pineapple got replaced with some chopped apples. Most of the sugar got tossed out. Sweet cheeses got replaced, in part, with cheese that had a bit more bite. Caramelized onions got added.

Here's what I came up with:

Onion-Cheese Kugel

Ingredients

• 16oz wide egg noodles
• 4 eggs
• 8 oz cream cheese
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 Tb brown sugar
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 apple (peeled and diced)
• 4 cups loosely packed caramelized onions
• 1/2 cup Gorgonzola
• 1/2 cup gruyere (diced)

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350º
• Cook noodles until al dente.
• Melt butter.
• caramelize onions.
• Add apples to onions.
• Blend eggs, cream cheese, sour cream, brown sugar, and salt until smooth.
• Stir in noodles, 2/3 of onion/apple mixture, gorgonzola, and diced gruyere.
• Pour mixture into greased pyrex dish.
• Top with a remaining onion/apple mix.
• Bake at 350º for about 1 hour.

Those at least were my notes. I made this for the first time at Thanksgiving. I can't guarantee that I followed them exactly. I don't even have respect for my own recipes.

In any case, the kugel went over extremely well at Thanksgiving. It was definitely one of the stand-outs.

This Thanksgiving, I tried two new dishes, both of which worked as well as I could have hoped. The first of these was a butternut squash dish. My brother had requested squash. I was concerned because we'd already worked out the rest of the menu and it was heavy. I wanted a lighter vegetable in there.

I decided to try to make something light using butternut squash.

I started off with a maple-balsamic dressing: balsamic vinegar, olive oil, maple syrup, a couple cloves of garlic, and some mustard to emulsify it a bit.

The night before, I cut up some squash into about a dozen half-circle slices, each about 1/3 inch thick. I marinated these in the maple-balsamic. A bottle of Jack Daniel's caught my eye, and I added a splash of that into the marinade. I didn't know whether there were any alcohol-soluble flavors in there, but I figured that it wouldn't hurt.

Shortly before the meal, some chopped red onion got added to the dressing. I tossed the squash slices on the grill. Each of the slices got cut into smaller pieces as they came off grill. The spinach was wilted, and I tossed it with the squash, onions, and some crumbled gorgonzola.

I'd considered adding some pecans, but I decided against it at the last minute. I don't think they would have worked in terms of texture.

The result? A relatively light, healthy vegetable dish that still managed to evoke Thanksgiving. Definitely a success.

As I can't get this in the store, I made some myself. It's decent though it can be bettered, mostly by using different peppers than I had (jalapenos and some smaller bell peppers, I want to switch to serranos).

All vegetables should be cut up into small pieces.

1 cup cauliflower
1/4 cup onion
1 cup hot peppers
4 cloves garlic, minced (or use garlic powder)
2 medium carrots
2 sticks celery
2 tbsp red pepper flake
1 cup olive oil (as needed)
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup green olives with pimento
water (as needed)
your favorite dried Italian herbs

Combine all cauliflower, onion, peppers, carrots, and celery and the salt in a large mixing bowl. Cover with water and allow to stand for at least three hours in a cool place. Drain and rinse. Pack the vegetables and remaining ingredients in a lidded jar and cover with olive oil. Allow to stand for another day and then refrigerate for storage and use.

Makes a nice side condiment or an ingredient in a Chicago style Italian beef sandwich.

As I said a while ago, I really like almonds. I had some roasted almonds I bought at Trader Joe's a while back which were roasted in olive oil, salt and rosemary. They had this nice rosemary scent which I really liked a lot. These were some kind of special Spanish almonds but I figured it wouldn't be hard to do with regular ones for a lot less. (I should try it with the fancy Spanish almonds.) There are numerous recipes on the web for this sort of thing but here's what I did:

1 cup raw almonds (blanched is probably best)
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp sea salt
2 tbsp dried rosemary (I didn't grind it but this would have been better)
1 tsp dried rubbed sage

Times are approximate, you'll have to test the almonds and watch to make sure they don't burn!

Put a saucepan on medium-low heat. Toss the almonds, 2 tbsp olive oil and the salt and allow to roast covered for approximately five to seven minutes, stirring occasionally to ensure even roasting. The nuts will get soft during this time. Add the remaining olive oil, rosemary and sage, toss and allow to roast uncovered for an additional three to five minutes. Allow the almonds to harden before serving, though they are best when still warm.

I'm a big fan of marinara sauce done with roasted vegetables:

2 cans whole peeled tomatoes in juice
2 cups mire poix
garlic
2 tbsp capers
bay leaf
2 tbsp herbes de provence
2 tbsp dried oregano
1 tsp cayenne
1 tbsp fresh ground black pepper
salt
10 sun dried tomatoes, julienned
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup wine (red or white---I use this to get rid of old wine)

Preheat the oven to 450. Drain the tomatoes and reserve the liquid. Seed them. In a roasting pan, soften the mire poix (salted) for about ten minutes, and then add the tomatoes, garlic, capers. Transfer to the oven and roast until caramelized and all the excess water has been driven off. Meanwhile, reduce the tomato liquid and the rest of the ingredients (except the wine) by half. Remove the vegetables from the oven, allow to cool and deglaze with the wine. Combine the vegetables and wine mixture with the reduction, mash with a potato masher and you're done.